


pick up your sorrow, this is not who we are

by nirav



Series: open my chest and color my spine [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 18:05:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6576940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirav/pseuds/nirav
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Winter Soldier AU, because I enjoy comics-inspired blasphemy.]</p><p>Kara wakes up in pieces, and puts herself back together again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pick up your sorrow, this is not who we are

**Author's Note:**

> Per the request of [smallandsundry](https://www.smallandsundry.tumblr.com), who was also instrumental in figuring out the details for the development of this fic. A second thanks to [ultranos](https://www.ultranos.tumblr.com), who helped me hammer out a few more of the details.
> 
> Please note: despite the abundance of Steve/Bucky shipping in the world, please be aware that this is not a romantic Kara/Alex fic, so if you're into that then I suggest you look elsewhere.
> 
> Additionally, please be aware that I am consciously playing very fast and loose with the MCU canon, and won't even pretend that this adheres to the actual comics canon.
> 
> If someone already wrote a Winter Soldier AU of this ilk, I'm very sorry, I promise I'm not trying to rip off your work.

_clean out your mouth, this is not what it's for_  
_there's still a bloodstain from the spill of the war_  
_pick up your sorrow, this is not who we are_  
_i won't cry uncle having come so far_

* * *

 

Kara wakes up in pieces.

Her limbs are intact, her heart pumping blood and lungs moving air, but she’s scattered in pieces across two continents and three decades.  

 _You saved the world_ , they tell her, when she’s been ushered back inside after a frenzied run out into a version of New York she’s never seen before.   _You stopped the cold war from turning hot_.

She’s been asleep in ice for decades, and the world has moved on without her.  The cold war is over.  America has a black president.  People carry computers in their pockets.

All this progress, and Alex is still dead, and Kara is still alone, a makeshift soldier with no war to fight and no family left to fight for.

Kara wakes up in pieces, but too many of them are missing, so she knits around them with a uniform and a rank and holds herself together.

* * *

 

Her memory is fuzzy some of the time.  She wakes up in the middle of the night, when it’s dark and she can’t see much beyond the small box of a room she has a bed in, and it’s still 1952 and she’s still a cold war propaganda puppet, waiting to be trotted out as Captain America, the beautiful blonde antithesis to communism.  1974 and she’s waiting on the edge, no longer of political use but prized for the serum strength infused in her muscles.  1979, and a software failure at NORAD and a trigger-happy general have her diving out of a plane to intercept a misfired nuclear missile aimed for Moscow, one she can barely reroute into the ocean and can’t disengage from fast enough to save herself.

Or it’s 1955 and her sister hasn’t disappeared, hasn’t had her name and rank and reputation dragged through the mud with thousands of others by a senator on a witch hunt; her sister is still a respected member of a team secretly stationed in St. Petersburg, a handler of American assets with no parallel.  Her sister is still alive and well and hasn’t been abandoned by her team just because an angry suitor threw her name into McCarthy’s radar with the word _lesbian_ attached to it.

The blurred edges when she first wakes up always solidify into sharper pictures, though, because it’s 2014 and Alex is gone, and Kara is alone.

She runs, more than she ever used to.  DC has changed, obviously; it’s more crowded and louder, a quiet cacophony instead of the nervous tension of the cold war.  Early mornings, though, it’s peaceful, before the cars are out or the subway is crowded.  She finds a loop around the Mall that’s almost empty early in the morning, before sunrise, and she runs it over and over every day.

Sometime long after she’s woken up, when she has a new apartment filled with her old clothes and records and books, a new uniform for her old rank, a new team for a new job, she starts seeing someone else on her runs.  At first it’s only twice a week, and then three, and then eventually every day, another woman who jogs the same route at a more reasonably human pace, starting just as Kara finishes her third loop.

It’s a Tuesday, and Kara overslept, somehow.  

(Somehow, she tells herself, like she hadn’t been on a mission in Syria the day before and didn’t stagger home into her bed at 3:00 in the morning.)

The sun is already starting to rise as she starts her first loop, long strides eating into her exhaustion.  Two miles in, she comes up on another runner and calls out an “On your left!” notification before she goes by.  By the time she comes up the other woman again, the kinks are out of her back from the day before, and her “On your left!” is answered with a tired “Yep, on my left.  Got it.”

The third time around, she’s finally found her stride.  Just as she’s about to call out her approach the other woman glares back over her shoulder and picks up her pace.

“Don’t you do it,” she says just before Kara calls out “On your left” and blows by.

“Come on!” She sprints after Kara, but Kara has already outpaced her by thirty steps.

Kara runs a final lap at a slower pace as a cooldown, the later hour granting her a view of the more crowded loop and the slow start to morning rush hour.  She cruises to a walk at the end of the lap and spots the other runner sitting at the base of a tree, breathing heavily.

“You need a medic?”

“You’re hilarious,” she says.  “What was that, fourteen miles in half an hour?”

“Technically I think it was thirteen.”

“Right,” she says, accepting the hand Kara offers her to pull her to her feet.  “Honestly, I expected better.  You should probably go run another lap to make up for it.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Kara says.  She gestures to the t-shirt the other woman is wearing.  “What unit are you with?”

“58th Pararescue.”  She holds out her hand again for Kara to shake.  “Lucy.  I work down at the VA now.”

“Kara Danvers.”

“Oh, I know who you are,” Lucy says.  “Must’ve been one hell of a shock, coming back after that long.”

“It takes some getting used to,” Kara says with a shrug.  

“Some things change, some things don’t,” Lucy says.  “I thought I’d be able to sleep better once I got home.  After sleeping wherever, I thought a bed would be great, but now it’s like--”

“Sleeping on a marshmallow,” Kara says.  Her head tilts to the side.  “How long?”

“Two tours,” Lucy says with a shrug.  “Lost one of the wingmen on the second, wasn’t really ready to go back after that.  It was a hard landing.”

“I’m sorry,” Kara says quietly.  “It’s--hard.  Losing people like that.”

Her phone beeps with a text message from Natasha, indicating her arrival.  “It was good to meet you, Lucy.”

“Hey, I’m sure you’re busy, but if you ever want to come by the VA-- it would probably mean a lot to some of the people there.  War changes, but it never really does, I guess.”

Natasha pulls up behind them, waving from the driver’s seat of her hideous sports car.

“I’ll see what I can do.  Thanks for the run, if that’s what you want to call running.”  Kara waves with a smile as she jogs over to Natasha’s car.

“Not all of us have superpowers, you know!” Lucy shouts after her.  Kara waves again, offering a bright smile from her seat in Natasha’s car.

* * *

 

“What’s on it?” Kara hisses at Natasha, backing her into an empty lounge and shoving her against the wall.

“I don’t know. I only act like I know everything, Danvers,” Natasha snaps.

“You knew Fury hired the pirates!”

“Makes sense, the ship was dirty and he needed a way in.”

“I’m not going to ask you again,” Kara says, shoving her harder against the wall.

“I know who shot Nick,” Natasha says in response.  

It’s enough to make Kara pause, though her grip doesn’t waver.

“Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists.  The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier.  He’s credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last  fifty years.”

“So he’s a ghost story,” Kara says, disappointment washing over her.

“Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear scientist out of Iran,” Natasha says, plowing ahead anyways.  “Somebody shot out our tires and we went over a cliff.  I pulled him out and was covering him but the Winter Soldier was there.  He shot him straight through me.”  She pulls the hem of her shirt up to show a scar Kara’s seen before, one she’s never asked about because they’re soldiers and they all have scars.  “Soviet slug.  No rifling.”

* * *

 

Things fall apart, as they do, and Kara stays together, as she does.  SHIELD is crumbling, but she’s tied herself to people, not dogma, and it keeps her pieces in line.  Nick Fury is dead, James has disappeared, Natasha is holding her own in the face of every belief she’s had since joining SHIELD being shattered, but Kara stays the same.

It’s easy, really, now that she knows who she’s fighting, and once SHIELD-- Hydra-- orders an airstrike on the bunker in New Jersey, she knows one easy place to hide.

The house is small and neat, the paint on the shutters and doors fresh, and Kara hops the fence into the backyard and knocks on the door.

Lucy opens it, confused and fresh off a run, but she lets them in without question.  She makes breakfast while they shower, asking no questions while they puzzle through the fact that the world’s police force has been cannibalized from the inside out.

“So the question is, how do the two most wanted people in Washington get to Sitwell in broad daylight?”

“The answer is, you don’t.”  Lucy appears in front of Kara, dropping a file in her lap.  Kara glances up at her before opening the file to a picture of Lucy with a set of mechanical wings strapped to her back.

“What’s this?”

“Call it a resume.”

Natasha takes the file out of Kara’s hands, flipping through it.  Kara holds onto the first picture, glancing between it and Lucy.

“I thought you said you were a pilot?”

“I never said pilot,” Lucy says with a smirk.

“I can’t ask you to do this,” Kara says.  She slides the picture back into the file.  “You got out and I’m not going to drag--”

“Captain America needs help,” Lucy says.  “Is there really a better reason to get back in?”

* * *

 

Jasper Sitwell is precisely as helpful as expected, give or take a few tosses off a roof and Lucy catching him just before he hit the ground, and they’re on their way to use him to access the Insight helicarriers when a heavy thump lands on the roof of the car and a metal arm yanks Sitwell out of the moving car, throwing him under the wheels of a truck behind them.

The Winter Soldier is sent flying off the car, only for metal fingers to slow the skid and a hummer to slam into the car from behind.  Kara manages to get ahold of both Natasha and Lucy when the car goes flying in the air and bully their way through the door, landing on the shield just enough to protect them all from the skid along the asphalt.

Kara gets her shield up just in time to block the rocket launched at her, the impact blowing her off the bridge and into a bus.  A Hydra agent lands on a car roof nearby and sprays bullets across the street, leaving Kara just enough of an opening to get close and drop him.  On the bridge, Lucy has found herself a weapon and is sniping at Hydra agents, shouting for Kara to go after Natasha.

As fast as she is, it’s not fast enough and she rounds a corner just in time to see Natasha drop with a bullet in her shoulder, the Winter Soldier lining up another clear shot from atop a car, and Kara launches herself forward shield-first.  A metal fist collides with it, the impact rippling all the way down into Kara’s stomach.

The Winter Soldier fights her, brutal and efficient, and Kara’s only advantage is a barely longer reach, her strength cancelling out the mechanical arm and robotic precision, and Kara gets ahold under the chin, ripping forward with a throw that would have broken the neck of anyone else; the Winter Soldier rolls to a crouch and glares back without a mask and--

That’s her sister, dead for fifty years, left to die in Russia during the cold war, that’s--

“Alex?”

“Who the hell is Alex?” She snaps.  She takes aim at Kara, only to be thrown into the side of a car by Lucy, who flies in and lands a kick with both feet into the center of her back.

Natasha launches a rocket at her, the explosion obscuring everything, and Kara stands there, exposed and dumb, as a team of Hydra agents circle them.  They’ve failed and Hydra has them branded as traitors to the public, but Kara just stands there and lets them take her shield and manhandle her into restraints, into a truck, with nothing to say except “ _Alex_.”

All of the pieces she’s held together fall, disconnected and untethered, because Alex is alive, Alex is alive, Alex is alive, and Kara gave up on her in 1956.  

* * *

 

James breaks them out, because James is the single most competent person Kara has met in the last seventy years.  Fury is alive, because Fury is the single most resilient person Kara’s met in the last seventy years.  

They have a plan, which basically amounts to hoping that there are more Natashas than Jaspers in SHIELD, and Kara walks away, waiting, alone.

“Hey,” Lucy says, leaning against the railing next to her and staring down at the water flowing through the dam.  “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s going to be there, you know,” Lucy says.

“I know.”

“Whoever she used to be, she’s not that anymore.  I don’t know if she’s a person you can save anymore.”

“She’s my sister,” Kara says.  “My sister.  I gave up on her, and they did this to her.  I’m not giving up on her again.”

“What if you can’t save her?”

“What if I can?”  She finally looks at Lucy.  “We’re family.  Her parents took me in when I was four, she’s been my sister my whole life.  Whatever these people did to her, she’s still my sister.”

“Okay,” Lucy says, taking a slow breath. “Okay.  I’ve got your back, then.”

“Then let’s go,” Kara says, clapping a hand on Lucy’s shoulder.

* * *

 

They’re a good team.  Kara shelves her pieces, just as she learned from Natasha-- not from lecture, but from observation, from interaction, from watching her watch her moral compass shatter and then her put it back together again to get the job done-- and they break into SHIELD.

Their gamble pays off, because there are more Natashas than Jaspers, because Natasha can tell any lie she needs to, because James can direct any mission from anywhere, because Lucy can fly like she was born with wings.  

Kara launches off of a helicarrier, shouting into the comms for a catch, and Lucy manages to get a hold on her with a grunt

“You’re too damn heavy,” Lucy grunts as they land on the next carrier, and Alex appears before Kara can respond, blasting her off the side of the carrier.  Kara catches herself on the engine vents, groaning with the effort and the sound of Lucy getting thrown off the other side of the carrier, one wing torn off.

“Lucy, you okay?” Kara shouts.

“I’m okay,” Lucy says with a curse as she lands, hard but safe, the parachute saving her life, if not her knees.  “I’m grounded, though, I can’t get back up there.”

“I got this,” Kara grinds out.  She climbs, finding a weak spot in the hull to smash into handholds, and makes her way to the servers.

Alex is there, waiting for her, blank and empty.

“People are going to die, Alex,” Kara says.  “I can’t let that happen.”

Alex is silent, her one remaining hand on the butt of a gun and the metal one forever clenched tight.

“Please don’t make me do this,” Kara tries again.  “I know you’re still in there, I know it.   Please wake up.”

There’s nothing, and all Kara can do is try to save everyone else first because she has to, because she was built to, so she hurls her shield at Alex and hopes for the best.

It hurts, fighting Alex, more than anything Kara can remember-- more than the serum, more than losing her the first time, more than crashing into the Atlantic ocean north of Norway-- and even when bullets rip through her side, bury in her leg, lodge in her abdomen, the thing that hurts the most is the sound of Alex’s arm snapping under her hands and the half-scream that grinds out past Alex’s teeth when it does.

“Charlie locked,” Kara manages to say into the comms, her legs weak under her, the bullet in her abdomen dragging her down.  “Do it.”

“But Kara,” James starts.

“Do it!”  Kara pulls her helmet off, letting it fall, and looks back to where Alex is pinned under a fallen beam, her mechanical arm crushed and her human one snapped.  It takes too long, getting back down to her, and her whole body protests  as she puts all of the strength the serum gave her into moving the beam trapping Alex.

Alex manages to pull free and scrambles to her feet, right arm hanging useless and broken at her side.

“You know me,” Kara says.  She drops the shield, staring up at Alex.

“No, I don’t,” Alex growls.  She throws a sloppy punch that Kara doesn’t block or dodge, metal knuckles slamming into Kara’s cheek and driving her to her knees.

“You know me,” Kara says again.  Another punch lands in the same spot, and her vision blurs.  “Your name is Alexandra Elizabeth Danvers.  Your mother was Eliza and your father was Jeremiah.”

Alex throws her elbow into Kara’s jaw, the impact flinging her onto her back, and Kara lays where she lands.

“You’re my sister,” Kara says, spitting blood out of her mouth.  “You adopted me when I was four years old.  You’re my sister.”

“You’re my mission.”  Another punch, and then another, and another; Kara’s cheekbone shatters and her jaw cracks.

“Then finish it,” Kara says around the blood in her teeth.  “Because I’m not leaving you.”

Alex stares down at her, fist drawn back, and she hesitates.  

“You’re my sister,” Kara says again, and then the helicarrier finally breaks apart, the floor falling out from under her.  Kara passes out before she hits the water, but not before she sees Alex diving after her.

* * *

 

When Kara wakes up, it’s to music playing and Lucy reading in a chair next to her bed.  She’s in pain-- painkillers are exactly as effective as alcohol on her-- and every healing crack in her bones, every broken rib, every stitch, is amplified-- but she manages to look over to her right and mumble out an “On you left” without hurting her jaw too much more.

Lucy rolls her eyes.  “You’re a dick, you know that?  Captain America is a dick.”

“You’re going to ruin my reputation,” Kara says.  “You okay?”

“Well, you know, I jumped out of an exploding building and landed in a helicopter, so my pride is numbing the pain from any injuries.”

“Show off,” Kara says.  “Did everyone make it?”

“Nat’s fine, she’s off covering your ass in front of the senate,” Lucy says.  “Fury is off doing..who the hell knows what, but he made it through fine.  Olsen is good, and he actually tendered an official resignation to give to Fury, because he’s a nerd.”

“What about Alex?”

Lucy quiets, letting out a slow breath and inspecting her hands.  Her knuckles are still bruised, a few covered with neatly-placed butterfly sutures.  

“We haven’t seen her,” Lucy says softly.  

“She saved me,” Kara says.  “I should have died from the fall, or at least drowned, but I didn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Kara says, firm and unyielding.  “She recognized me, Lucy.  I can help her.”

“Okay then,” Lucy says.  “Where do we start?”

“Natasha.”

* * *

 

Natasha comes through, as she does, with intel and a warning and a sad smile that Kara, honestly, has never seen her show to anyone else.  She refuses to believe it’s the last she’ll see of Natasha, and she leaves her with a hug and a promise to be careful.

The thread Natasha warned her to be careful pulling on leads them to Moscow, to St. Petersburg, to Sharif, to Kiev.  They circle back to Moscow at least three times, pulling threads and tracking reports of monsters with metal arms.  At least one six month break is needed, when Kara’s too slow in getting her shield up to protect them from an explosion and Lucy’s femur is snapped clean through.  

It takes more than two years for Kara to finally put eyes on Alex, and when she does it’s across a crowded street in Minsk, the shift in her gait from the weight of her metal arm giving her away.  

They follow her, through the city and to an abandoned warehouse.  There’s a small camp set up, a lonely mattress with a thin blanket and no pillow, a pallet full of bottled water, a crate of military MREs.  Kara’s throat tightens as Alex settles on the mattress and lights up a camp stove, heating up an MRE alone with no real light.

“I’m going to talk to her,” Kara says softly.

“Okay, that’s high on your list of terrible ideas,” Lucy says.  “Kara, we need a plan of approach.”

“Lucy, look at her,” Kara hisses.  “She’s set up a home here.  She’s not on mission, else she wouldn’t be here.  She’s on the run, which means she’s thinking for herself.  I have to talk to her.  Keep a tranq on her if you want, but I’m going to talk to her.”

“If she kills you, I’m not taking the blame,” Lucy says.  “Be careful.”

Kara keeps her steps soft until she’s close enough to be visible, scuffing her shoes on the concrete as she stops.  Alex is on her feet in a flash, gun in hand and trained at Kara, before Kara can say anything.

“Alex,” she says, hands in the air.  “Do you recognize me?”

The gun doesn’t lower, but Alex’s shoulder drops minutely.  “You lived next door.  You used to borrow my dresses.”

“That’s right,” Kara says, moving forward. “Your family adopted me, do you remember that?”

“There was a fire,” Alex says slowly.  Her brow furrows.  

“And my parents died,” Kara says.  She steps closer.  The gun stays trained on her but Alex’s posture starts to slump.  “I shared your room.  We put couch cushions on the floor with the mattress to make a big bed.”

“Kara,” Lucy says quietly into the comm in Kara’s ear.  “We’ve got a dozen military at least coming in on us right now.”

Kara ignores her, moving close enough to Alex that she can reach the gun, slowly pushing it wide of her.  “Alex,” she says again.  “I want you to come home with me.”

“I don’t have one anymore,” Alex says.  

“You do,” Kara insists.  “With me.  Your sister.”

“Kara,” Lucy says again.  “Sixty seconds to impact.”

“Alex,” Kara says.  “Come back with me.  I can help you.”

“Kara,” Lucy says sharply.  “Sorry, calling it.”  A snap rings out somewhere behind Kara and a dart buries itself in Alex’s neck.  Alex collapses almost immediately, and Kara drops to catch her.

“Goddammit,” Kara mutters.  

“Sorry, Kara,” Lucy says.  “Come on, let’s get her out of here.”

Kara hoists Alex up and runs, meeting Lucy at their rooftop exit and disappearing into the city just as  military police break into the building.

* * *

 

Kara puts in a call to James, not taking her eyes off of Alex’s unconscious form.

“We need extraction,” Kara says.  “Lucy will send you the coordinates.   It needs to be quiet and we need a medical team.”

“Kara,” James says.  “Are you sure--”

“Do it now,” Kara says sharply.  “I’ll deal with Tony or Fury or whoever the hell I need to.  Just send me the plane.”

“Roger,” James says.  “Give me an hour.”

Alex doesn’t stir at all when the plane arrives, or when they hurry her onto it.  There’s a team of doctors on board, and Tony is there as well, suited up and glaring quietly at Alex.

“Thanks for the ride,” Kara says, slumping against the wall next to him once they’re in the air.  The medical team hurries around Alex, connecting heart monitors and an oxygen mask.

“If she goes Terminator on my plane then I’m putting her down.”

“She’s not a dog,” Kara snaps.  

“People aren’t always responsible for the monsters they become, but that doesn’t mean they’re good anymore, either.”

“She’s a victim,” Kara says.  “They wiped her brain and froze her, over and over, to control her.  She’s less to blame for the lives she took than you are for the ones your weapons took.”

“She’s stable,” one of the doctors says.  “The tranquilizer will probably wear off within an hour.”

“Dose her,” Tony says sharply.  “I don’t want her waking up and blowing us out of the sky.”

“She--”

“Do it,” Lucy says, a hand on Kara’s shoulder.  

“See?  Your sidekick agrees with me,” Tony says.  Kara punches him, her fist slamming into his nose before he can even get his mask down.  He curses, blood pouring out of his broken nose, and Lucy smirks up at him.

“Now imagine what she’s going to do to you if you hurt her sister,” she says sweetly.  She keeps ahold of Kara’s arm and pulls her over to the other side of the plane.

“How do you want to play this?” Lucy asks quietly.  “When we land.  We don’t have the resources to keep this quiet, or even to help her.”

“Pepper and Natasha have been working on that,” Kara says, pushing a hand through her hair.  “There are some doctors she’s vetted that she thinks can help.”

“Does Stark know his girlfriend is helping you?”

“Who cares,” Kara mutters.

“Do they even know where to start?”

“I have no idea,” Kara says, slumping down onto a bench and staring at Alex’s unconscious body.  The dull lights in the airplane reflect off of her metal arm.  “But we’re going to try.”

* * *

 

Pepper and Natasha, unsurprisingly, are terrifyingly efficient, and by the time the plane lands in Malibu, they’ve set up a private facility and flown a team of doctors out to meet them.  James has a security team waiting for them all, and Kara watches, useless, as Alex is wheeled into a secure room with a team of doctors buzzing around her.

The first time Alex wakes up, she throws one of the doctors through the viewing window, breaking his arm.  It takes Kara and the whole team to subdue and dose her again, and Kara stands on the other side of the viewing window in a new room to watch as they strap Alex down into a chair.

“She won’t break out of those,” Lucy says quietly.  “Banner could, maybe, but that’s about it.”

“I hate this,” Kara says.  “I don’t want her restrained.”

“Kara, we have--”

“I know what we have to do,” Kara says.  “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

The second time Alex wakes up, she breaks her own wrist trying to pull out of the restraints, an animalistic scream ripping out of her as she does.

The third time, Kara bullies her way into the room to wait, sitting across from a newly-restrained Alex.  

“Alex,” she says when Alex’s breathing changes and she starts to wake.  “Alex, it’s me.”

Alex’s eyes open slowly, foggy with tranquilizers.  She squints at Kara, her head lolling sleepily.

“Do you know who I am?”

Long seconds click by, and Kara waits, hands clenched together, until Alex mumbles out “Kara.”

“Yeah,” Kara says, a bright smile growing on her face.  “Kara.  Your sister.”

“You died,” Alex mutters.  

“No, Alex, no,” Kara says.  “I’m here.  Right here.  Alive and well.”  

“They said you died,” Alex says.  She blinks, shaking her head.  

“Who said that?”

“They--the doctor.  I woke up and my family was dead.”

“I’m right here,” Kara says again, her voice wobbling.  “Do you know what year it is?”

Alex shakes her head, looking down at the cast on her arm, confusion written across her face.

“It’s 2016,” Kara says gently.  “And your arm is broken, but it’ll heal.”

“No,” Alex says.  “No, you died in 1954.”

“Alex,” Kara says.  Her voice cracks.  “I’m right here.  I never died. I thought you did, you were gone, but we’re both here, now.  Together.”

“How is it 2016?”

“I-- I was asleep,” Kara says.  “For a long time.  And you were captured.  They hurt you, and then they put you to sleep, and woke you up to use you.  Do you remember that?”

“You were on a bridge,” Alex says suddenly.  “We were on a bridge.”

“Right!  In Washington,” Kara says.  “That’s when I realized it was you.”

“I tried to kill you,” Alex says.  Her metal fists clenches, the noise loud and grating.  “You were my mission.”

“That wasn’t you,” Kara says firmly.  “They wiped your mind, that wasn’t you.  This is you, right here.  This is you.”

“This is me,” Alex mumbles, uncertainty dragging her voice down.

“Yes,” Kara says.  

It’s a start.

* * *

 

It’s a start, but a slow one.  A day later, Alex has forgotten again, and Kara starts over.  The doctors try different treatments, everything from hallucinogens to barbiturates to relax her, to calm her, to open up her mind and unlock the blocks built into it from the last fifty years.  Natasha suggests having her light up a joint every day.  

There are restarts and setbacks, days when Alex wakes up in her room determined that she’s on mission in Caracas, in Moscow, in London, and tries to fight her way out through the walls; days when the doctors succeed too much and she wakes up screaming at the wash of memories coming back to her, of the people she killed, the people who strapped her to chairs and wiped her memory over and over.

Kara is there every day, watching, trying.  When Kara isn’t there, in the few hours a day she elects to sleep, Lucy is there instead, keeping watch.  

It takes months until Alex recognizes Kara more days than she doesn’t, and Kara takes it as the first big win when Alex remembers who she is, every day, for a week straight; a missing piece clicks into place somewhere in Kara’s chest when, on the seventh day, she walks into Alex’s room and Alex speaks to her by name.  

Seven months in, Alex asks, for the first time, if she can sleep unrestrained.

Fourteen months in, she hasn’t had a setback in more than twelve weeks, and Kara takes her for a walk on the beach, just the two of them.

Alex wears a hoodie to cover her arm, the sleeve tugged down past her hand and both arms folded over her stomach.  Kara walks at her side, barefoot in the sand, watching as Alex takes slow and measured steps, waiting for each foot to sink into the sand before she moves the other.  

“Mom and Dad are dead, aren’t they?” she says after more than a mile.  

“Yeah,” Kara says quietly.  “They were gone when I woke up.”  

“Yeah,” Alex echoes.  “Did they know why-- what happened?”

“The military listed you as missing in action,” Kara says, drawing to a stop.  “They don’t know what-- they didn’t know why you were captured, why your team abandoned you.”

“Is it better now?  For people like me?”

“People with metal arms?” Kara asks, elbowing her gently.  Alex doesn’t flinch, and Kara adds another tally to her victory column.  It’s growing, slowly, catching up to the failures.  “Or people who aren’t straight?”

Alex doesn’t respond, taking in a slow breath and staring out at the water.

“It’s getting there, I think,” Kara says after a moment.  “They can serve in the military openly.  They can get married now, here.”

“Really?”

“Since 2015,” Kara says.

“It took that long?”

“Yeah, well,” Kara grumbles.  “People, as a whole, are slow to change.”

“So Mom and Dad didn’t know, right?” Alex says. Her voice catches.  “That I was-- that--”

“That you’re gay?” Kara asks softly.  

“Yeah,” Alex says.  

“They know you were deployed, and that you disappeared.  They held a funeral, and they never stopped loving you.”  She takes Alex by the shoulders, it gentle and loose.  “They would have still loved you if they knew, but it wasn’t my place to tell them, and your work was too classified by the military for the Army to say anything besides the fact that you were missing.”

“Okay,” Alex says.  “Okay.”

“You want to head back?” Kara asks.  “Or keep going?”

“Can we just stay here for a bit?” Alex says.  “It’s quiet.”

“Sure thing,” Kara says with a grin.  She plops down on the sand, settling easily with her legs folded, and pats the spot next to her.  Alex lowers herself slowly, sitting stiff and unsure next to Kara.  “We can stay as long as you like.”

* * *

 

Two weeks later, and walks on the beach have morphed into runs on the beach as Alex works through pent up energy.  Lucy suggests a sparring room, and they convert one of the old holding rooms-- one Alex hasn’t needed in months, since the last time she woke up and threw a doctor through a window-- into a gym.  

Alex can’t fight Kara.  They try and she falters, the few threads of memory she has of Kara as family too fragile for her to even throw a punch, so Lucy steps in instead.  It takes days of effort, Lucy dancing around Alex and Alex too worried to throw a real punch, but eventually they work up to it.  By the eighteen months have passed since they brought Alex home, she’s sparring with Lucy every morning to supplement the runs on the beach with Kara ever evening.

* * *

 

Two years in and ten months since Alex’s last bad day, they face the next fight-- where Kara has to stand in front of congress with her sister and prove that she’s not a threat-- shoulder to shoulder.  Natasha and Lucy are with them, and a team of excellent lawyers personally selected by Pepper Potts stands in front of them, alongside six expert medical professionals to counter the four trotted out by the government.

Even Tony stands with them.

Congress proposes house arrests, tracking devices, quarantine, everything short of prison.  Pepper’s lawyers counter them at every turn, trotting out their experts and any precedent they can find, sourcing their argument on Alex’s citizenship, her service, her abandonment by the government on the basis of her sexuality.  It draws enough attention from civil rights groups that the whole mess goes from military to political in the span of a week, with protesters and hashtags and online petitions in Alex’s name appearing out of nowhere.

“This is insane,” Alex mumbles during a recess.  “They shouldn’t be-- I’m not a martyr.”

“Alex,” Kara says.  “You’re literally chained up just to stand in front of them.  Of course you’re a martyr.”

“They’re not doing this because I’m gay,” Alex says hotly.  The shackles on her wrists-- symbolic at best, the chains too flimsy to actually contain her mechanical arm-- rattle loudly.

“No, but they left you to die in 1954 because of that,” Lucy says bluntly, leaning back in her chair.  

“That doesn’t--”

“Actually, it does matter,” Lucy says.  She drops her chair back down onto all four legs. “People like us are still fighting for our rights, and every win helps.  The government let a bunch of homophobia get the better of them during the McCarthy hearings, and that resulted in your capture and everything after it.  So let them make you their hero, because you deserve it after what happened to you.”

“What she said,” Kara said, pointing at Lucy.

The recess ends, and everyone turns back to the front.  Alex hesitates, looking back at Lucy with a furrowed brow.  

“People like us?” she says quietly.

Lucy winks at her.  “Eyes front, Danvers.”

* * *

 

In the end, Alex walks out of congress a free woman, her military record restored and name cleared.  She has no credit, no home, no job, but no shackles on her wrists and no one shadowing her.  

“So,” Kara says as they make their way through the crowds outside of the capitol building.  “Celebratory drinks, yeah?”

“ _Hell_ yeah,” Lucy says.  “Stark’s buying, right?”

“No!” Tony shouts from ten people back.

“Yes,” Pepper says from Alex’s other side.  A car pulls up for them, and she pauses to hug Alex tightly before shooing her into the car.  Kara and Lucy follow, the door slamming shut behind them.

“So,” Kara says again.  She launches across the open back seat of the oversized limo, tackling Alex with a hug.  “You did it!”

“I didn’t--” Alex starts.

“Shut it, Danvers,” Lucy says from her seat.  “Let people be happy for you.”  She bangs on the partition separating them from the driver.  “Let’s go get tanked, people.”

They wind up at an empty bar at 3:00 in the afternoon.  The lone bartender looks perplexed at the glove covering Alex’s left hand and the suit jacket she doesn’t remove even as Kara and Lucy shuck theirs, but serves them without question.

“To kicking congressional ass,” Lucy says, holding out her drink.

“To family,” Kara adds.  Lucy groans and slaps at her shoulder, even as Kara taps their glasses together.

“You’re such a sap,” Lucy says.  “At least Alex is fun.”

“What does that mean?” Alex says, one eyebrow up.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Lucy says.  She knocks back half of her drink and points at Alex.  “Alright, Danvers, you get first crack at the music.  Don’t disappoint me.”  She swings her arm over to point at the jukebox, staring Alex down until she rolls her eyes and heads to the jukebox.

“You like her,” Kara says, kicking at Lucy’s shin.

“Ow,” Lucy says.  “Watch it with the super strength, okay?”

“You like her,” Kara says again.

“The fact that she’s even less perceptive than you about it is really worrisome,” Lucy says, rolling her eyes.

“She needs time,” Kara says quietly.  “With everything she’s been through--”

“I’m in no hurry,” Lucy says.  “When she’s back in a good place, then we’ll talk.  But I’m not looking to rush into anything.”

“Good,” Kara says with a small smile.  “You’ll be good for her.”

“Hell yeah I will be,” Lucy says, flicking her hair over her shoulder.  She hops off her barstool and skips over to where Alex is still musing over the jukebox.  Her hand settles easily on Alex’s right arm, curling around her elbow, and Alex doesn’t flinch or lean away.  Kara leans back on the bar and watches as Lucy pokes Alex in the ribs and Alex hipchecks her gently.  The last missing pieces finally click back into place, and Kara smiles.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Housekeeping: in the event that it wasn't made sufficiently clear throughout the story (totally possible, because I'm tired), Alex's capture was a result of her working as a handler for American military assets in Russia and, following an accusation by someone that she was a lesbian (if you haven't read about [the lavendar scare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_scare), definitely give it a look) and the general fear of being wrapped up in the witch hunts just by associating with someone facing accusations, the team she was working with abandoned her and she as captured, which is how she became the Winter Soldier.


End file.
